Spoonbills

Some people keep their nose to the grindstone, their ear to the ground, or their eye on the ball. But the roseate spoonbill keeps its bill in the muck. The beautiful bird feeds by sticking its wide, spoon-shaped bill into murky waters and sweeping it from side to side. The inside of the bill is lined with sensitive detectors that feel the vibrations of small fish, shrimp, insects, or other possible prey. When it feels one of these tasty morsels, the bird snaps its bill shut, then uses the bill to separate the good bits from the mud and debris.

Many of those morsels may account for the roseate spoonbill’s most obvious feature: its beautiful plumage. Its body is covered in bright pink feathers, which get especially intense during mating season. That color probably comes from the bird’s diet, which is rich in shrimp. The shrimp eat algae that produce red and yellow pigments. When the birds eat the shrimp, they absorb those pigments, which find their way to the spoonbill’s feathers.

Those feathers nearly led to the colorful bird’s demise. At the start of the 19th century, the spoonbill numbered in the thousands all along the Gulf of Mexico coastline, from Florida to Texas. But the feathers were prized for women’s fans. To meet the demand, hunters killed so many of the birds that their population dwindled in a hurry. Fortunately, though, conservation measures rescued the roseate spoonbill -- allowing these colorful birds to continue sifting through the murky waters along the Gulf coast.